Posted 21/04/09 By Aaron Spitzer
Every so often, someone proposes an idea so good – an idea that dovetails so closely with your own thinking, or what you should have been thinking – that you smack yourself for not pitching it first.
So it is with the recent talk of turning the North Pole into an international park. I can’t believe I haven’t been advocating this all along. Now, I am.
The idea’s probably been around for decades, but in Canada it shot onto the radar recently when it was championed by Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.
Hilary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, has started suggesting something similar. And for a better sense of what an Arctic park might be like, Clinton suggests we cast our sights south, to Antarctica, which is governed by the Antarctic Treaty.
That treaty’s been around for 50 years now. At its core, it dictates that no nation owns any part of Antarctica, and it largely limits activities there to scientific research. The treaty was cobbled together during the Cold War, to insure that the seventh continent not become a pawn in the global battle between Russia and the U.S. – and, secondarily, that it not be exploited by the rapacious industrial interests ransacking the more developed world.
A decade ago I spent a summer research-season at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and was able to travel elsewhere on the continent, including to the South Pole. I can say with reasonable confidence that the Antarctica Treaty is a success. The dominant spirit “on the Ice,” as we called it, was one of scientific curiosity and international amity. It was quite the opposite of the much-feared “tragedy of commons.”
Compare that to the screwed-up situation in the North. Russians sinking flags into the polar ocean. Canadians and Danes scrambling to define the northerly margin of their continental shelves. Americans beefing up their icebreaker capacity. Putin’s jets buzzing the Beaufort coast. And breathless speculation about just how much oil and gas lies hiding beneath the High Arctic seabed.
Enough already. Let’s make the Arctic Ocean a permanent, international “commons.” If it’s beyond a nation’s 200-mile limit, it’s off-limits. No industrial exploitation. No national land-claims. Let’s nip the growing polar frenzy in the bud. A saner course was set half a century ago in Antarctica. Let’s follow that same course in the North.
